Skow Swamp
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The Skow Swamp is a fictional location in the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.
[edit] Description
The Skow Swamp is located near Hawker's Trail between Hartland and Southaven in Westland. While the boundary was up but weakening, it was one of the few places along Hawker's Trail that was safe at night from the heart hounds.
The Skow Swamp is a low area of Hawker's Trail, surrounded by a sodden wood of cedar. The swamp itself is a bowl in the earth at the bottom of a sharp slope. It smells of wet and rotting dense vegetation. Woody vines hang from slick twisted limbs of trees that stand in the water on roots looking like claws, and smaller leafy vines spiral around anything strong enough to hold them. Everything seems to be growing on top of something else. Water, dark and still, sits in stagnant expanses as if it had been steeped with decayed vegetation, and sneaks in under clumps of bushes, enveloping stands of fat-bottomed trees. Duck weed drifts in thick mats on the water, looking like manicured lawn. The lush growth seems to swallow all sound, allowing only the native calls to echo across the waters. Large trunks of trees stand like columns in the mire.
Going through Skow Swamp, Hawker's Trail narrows and struggles to remain above the black water. There is an island high enough to be dry off the trail surrounded by water no more than 3 or 4 feet deep. A large number of big water snakes call this water their home. There is a few poplar trees at the high point in the center of the island and cedars at the water's edge, but mostly it is covered with reed and a smattering of iris.
